Part 11 (1/2)
The Revolution in Russia may alter a few things, but it can scarcely effect much change in the character of its people. This iron mountain is an ill.u.s.tration of the mixture of mediaevalism and modernism to be found in Russia's industrial development. The summit of the mountain is capped with an Orthodox Greek church, and desperate efforts have been made to secure its removal to a less exalted and less valuable site. I was informed that the mere suggestion proved almost fatal to its originators, and by so narrow a margin did they escape that the proposal is not likely to be repeated. I made the suggestion quite innocently, and produced such a storm that only my foreign ignorance provided me with a satisfactory excuse. I was asked: ”Would you take G.o.d from His place over this work?” One other thing I noticed everywhere. There was not one important workshop from Irkutsk to Perm without its altar, candles and all complete, and scarcely a business or Government office without its ikon facing you the moment you entered.
I attended the Orthodox Easter celebration at Perm. The whole edifice was crowded with people of every walk in life. I was not merely an interested spectator, but one who believes that where man wors.h.i.+ps he appeals to the same G.o.d no matter by what name He is called.
I watched this crowd, each holding a long lighted taper, stand for hours making the sign of the Cross, while the gorgeously-robed priest chanted the service and made sundry waves with his hands and gave certain swings with the incense-burner. The responses were made by a group of men with beautiful, well-trained voices, but the people looked spiritually starved. Not one took the slightest part in the service beyond an occasional whispered murmur, nor are they expected to. They stood outside the pale; there was no place for them. I must say that I contrasted this isolation of the congregation with the joint act of wors.h.i.+p as performed in our churches, both Free and Anglican. I looked at these ”Christian” men and women and thought of the butchery of Petrograd and Moscow, the wells of Kushva and Taighill, and the ruthless disregard of human life by both sides in this brutal internecine strife.
I wondered whether I had stumbled upon at least one of the causes. At any rate, I did not forget we also had the heroes of the Watkin Works.
Nadegenska is the extreme north-west point of the Ural system of railways, and is famous because of its great privately-owned steelworks.
These works were originated by a poor peasant woman, who developed the whole district until it has become the most northerly Asiatic industrial centre in the Russian Empire. The contrast in treatment at these privately-owned works compared with those owned by the Government is significant. The Soviet Commissar knew nothing about the business himself, and appointed Works Commissars, still more ignorant of their duties, to control the establishment. The result was that production fell to such a point that the experts refused to work under such incompetents and gradually escaped to other outlandish districts. The manager stuck to his post during the battle of Perm, and by a judicious distribution among the Bolshevik Commissars of the surplus roubles of the Tsar remaining in his possession got them out of the works without damage. This was an unheard-of situation, for nowhere else have the Soviet Commissars left anything they could destroy.
It was interesting to notice that nearly the whole of the machinery in these works was either of German or American make, the latter always predominating; there was some English and some Belgian, about an equal amount of each. I heard a curious statement at Kushva to the effect that the German firms were always prepared to build and fit out a big works, and run it for one year, without asking for a penny. Of course they always first carefully examined the possibilities of the locality, but the managers a.s.sured me that it was rare for German machinery to be equal, either for use or wear and tear, to the English, nor was it as cheap; but they could always get long credit from German firms, and that was most important in developing new enterprises.
We set off for Perm, with a stop on our way at the Vackneah Turansky Works. These works employed from four to five thousand men, doing everything from smelting to the making of engines, carriages, sh.e.l.ls, guns, etc., and were the best equipped workshops I saw in the Urals. The only complaint was lack of orders. The old regime did everything--nearly all this great mineral district was developed under the personal care of the Tsars. The Bolsheviks have destroyed the State control of these establishments, and already the _bourgeoisie_ are casting hungry eyes upon this great industry and the Omsk Ministers are rubbing hands over the loot they hope to collect during this transfer. How vain the hopes of those who looked to the Revolution to develop public control of all natural resources! Already the State lands are parcelled out amongst the wealthy peasants, who as a result of this robbery will establish a great landed aristocracy, and, if I do not misread the signs, a similar fate is about to overtake the great State industries with the creation of an aristocracy of wealth.
At Turansky we picked up Sergeant Coleman, of the Durham Light Infantry, the only Englishman who weathered the journey from Archangel with a party of Russians who had started from the north to try and get into direct touch with the Russian Army. They had made a circuitous route and avoided the districts held by the Bolshevik forces, and therefore had nothing of interest to report to us. The whole party, under a Russian officer in English uniform, were attached to my train and taken to Perm, where instructions awaited them to proceed at once to Omsk.
While examining the damage done during the street fighting at Perm we encountered a mob of the Red Guard who had marched over their own lines at Glashoff and surrendered to General Gaida. They were drawn up four deep in the market-place for a roll call. I studied their faces and general appearance, and came to the conclusion that if the progress of the world depended upon such as these the world was in a very bad way.
They were Kirghis, Mongols, Tartars, Chinese, mixed with a fair sprinkling of European-Russian peasants, workmen and others mostly of the lowest type, but with just enough of the ”old soldier” element to make them formidable. A strange idea struck me that I would like to speak to these men. The proposition, made almost in jest, was taken up seriously by my liaison officer, Colonel Frank, who interviewed the commandant of the station, Colonel Nikolioff, upon the subject. He at first took up a hostile att.i.tude, but when he gathered the substance of my proposed address he consented, and arranged the meeting at the camp for 6 P.M. the following evening, April 22. Of all the meetings it has been my privilege to hold, this was the most unique. The Bolshevik soldiers stood to attention and listened to me with great interest. One or two were sailors, and some others could understand a little English, as could be seen by the way they conveyed in whispers the points of the speech to their neighbours. Madame Frank translated, and in beautiful Russian drove home each point. Hers was a magnificent performance. As she repeated my word-picture of their untilled fields, destroyed homes, outraged women, and murdered children, not the ravages of an alien enemy, but the work of their own hands, Russian against Russian, tears trickled down their war-scarred faces. Clearly these men felt they had been deceived, and would willingly endeavour to rectify the injuries of the past. Some volunteered their services at once to help their Mother Country to recover from the ravages they had made and administer justice upon those who had led them into madness, but Colonel Nikolioff asked them to remember that their crimes had been very great, and nothing but time could heal the wounds and soften the bitterness their conduct had created. Some asked that it should be remembered that they were not Bolshevik in principle, but had been forced to become soldiers in the Red Army, from which they could not desert until their villages were captured by the Koltchak army, as their whole families, held as hostages for their good conduct, would have been ma.s.sacred. This they a.s.serted had been done in numberless cases where the families were in Bolshevik hands.
The value of the rouble in Perm at that time was about one penny. My officers and men were paid at the rate of 40 roubles to the 1. The prisoners' camp was about three and a half versts distant, and the duration of the meeting was one hour and five minutes; the droshky hire for the journey was 100 roubles per droshky. Everything was in proportion. For instance, common cigarettes were 1 rouble each. If I had smoked twenty a day or used them between myself and my numerous official visitors, half my colonel's pay would have gone. There must surely have been something wrong in fixing the rate of exchange at Harbin or ”Vlady,” 5,000 versts away, and leaving officers at the front in a stage of poverty not one whit better than the people whose all had been destroyed by the Revolution. I have no remedy to offer, but it is not very satisfactory to receive your rouble at 6d. and spend it at 1d. What is more! If I had been paid in 1 notes or sovereigns, I could have got something approaching 200 roubles for each at the Perm rate! Wages had increased under Bolshevik rule, but prices were such that one of the pet.i.tions we had to forward to the Government at Omsk on behalf of the workmen was that the wages and prices should be the same as under the old regime.
On April 24 the ice on the Khama started to move about 5 A.M. It was a very imposing sight. It moved first as one solid block, carrying boats, stacks of timber, sledge roads--everything--with it. The point near the bridge held for some time, until the weight behind forced some part down and crunched its way through in one irresistible push; the other part rose over the resistance and rolled like an avalanche over and over, smas.h.i.+ng itself into huge blocks which were forced into a rampart fifty feet high, when the enormous weight broke the ice platform on which it was piled, and the whole moved majestically off towards the Volga. Then one experienced the peculiar illusion of gliding along the river; it was necessary to plant one's feet far apart to prevent a fall. The Khama near Perm is over a mile wide, and this method of Nature to herald spring to these snow- and ice-bound regions lacks nothing so far as grandeur is concerned. During the next few days millions of tons of derelict timber pa.s.sed on its way to the Caspian. The careless Russian never thinks of hauling his spare stock off the ice until the ice actually begins to move. He tells you that the proper time for the ice to move is between May 1 and 5; that if it moves a week earlier it means good crops, which would balance the loss of the timber, so that he has no cause to complain.
It is no part of my business to deal with atrocities such as have disgraced the proletarian dictators.h.i.+p of Moscow. Where I could not avoid them in my narrative of events, I have done so without reference to the revolting details which everybody so hungrily devours. History shows that it is not possible to avoid these excesses whenever the safeguards of civil order are swept away by the pa.s.sions of the mob. Our own revolutionaries should remember this before and not after the event.
They should be considered not as a risk but as a certainty when once the foundations of order are uprooted. At Perm the breaking of the ice revealed some of the truth, and it formed quite sufficient evidence of the callous behaviour of the Bolshevik administrators.
Below a steep bank a few yards from the Terrorist headquarters a small shed was erected on the ice. It was called a wash-house, and during the day was.h.i.+ng was done there. At night the place, apparently, was, like the streets, deserted, but as a square hole was cut through the ice, it was an ideal place for the disposal of bodies, dead or alive. The people knew that after an inspection of the better-cla.s.s homes by officers of the Soviet if there was evidence of valuable loot; the whole family would quietly disappear, and the valuables were distributed by sale, or otherwise, amongst the Soviet authorities. If a workman protested against this violence, he disappeared, too, in the same secret fas.h.i.+on.
The poor women who used the shed during the day for its legitimate purpose told from time to time grim stories of blood and evidence of death struggles on the frozen floor as they began the morning's work.
Several thousand people were missing by the time the Koltchak forces captured the town.
The ice in the shelter of the bank began to thaw before the more exposed part of the river, which enabled the people whose friends and neighbours were missing to put a rude and ineffective screen below the shed in the hope of recovering the bodies of some of their friends. I knew about the shed but not about the screen, until I was informed by Regt.
Sergeant-Major Gordon that he had seen several hundred bodies taken from the river. The following morning I walked into the crowd of anxious people who were watching the work. The official in charge told me quite simply that they had not had a very good morning, for three hours' work had only produced some forty bodies. I looked at these relics of the new order; they were of both s.e.xes and belonged to every condition of life, from the gruff, h.o.r.n.y-handed worker to the delicately-nurtured young girl. A miscellaneous a.s.sortment of the goods, among other things, revolutions are bound to deliver.
We held a big meeting in the great railway works which created quite a sensation. The fact that the English were at Perm spread back to Omsk, and four days later j.a.panese and French Missions put in an appearance.
If the French came to maintain their prestige it was a pity that they did not choose a better agent for their purpose. I had been invited to lunch with a very worthy representative of the town, Mr. Pastrokoff, and his wife. I arrived to find the good lady in great agitation. A French officer had called and informed the household that a French Mission had just arrived composed of three officers; they would require the three best rooms in the house, the use of the servants and kitchen; that no furniture must be removed from the three rooms he saw under pain of punishment, etc. The lady protested and told the French officer that even the Bolsheviks had not demanded part of her very small house when made acquainted with the requirements of her family, but the officer had replied that any inconvenience was outweighed by the great honour conferred upon her house by the presence of officers of the French Army.
It would not be polite to the glorious French Army to repeat Madame Pastrokoff's reply. It only shows how stupid it is to send to foreign countries any but the best men to represent a great and gallant nation.
I naturally reminded Madame that she was a Russian, living in her own country, under her own Government, and she must report the case to the Russian authorities, who would doubtless provide accommodation for the French Mission if necessary.
The Pastrokoffs, coupled with the vivacious Madame Barbara Pastokova and her husband, were among the most homely and interesting people it was my pleasure to meet in the Urals. If you have never been in Russia you know nothing of hospitality; you only squirm around the fringe of the subject. The hospitality of our friends at Perm was truly Russian, and I was sorry when we had to leave. M. Pastrokoff told me of the following incident of the early relief of Perm from the Terrorist.
General Pepelaieff's army was stretched along the railway from Perm towards Vatka, the junction of the Archangel Railway. The temperature was over ”60 below,” the men were without clothes, thousands had died from exposure, and other thousands were in a ghastly condition from frost-bite. There was little or no hospital accommodation, and the Omsk Ministers were deaf to all appeals for help, they being more concerned as to how they could shake off the Supreme Governor's control than how best to perform their duty. In the early days of February the feeding of the army became a pressing problem, and still the Omsk Ministers remained silent. On February 10 Pastrokoff received an imperative order to appear at General Hepoff's office. At 11 A.M. he arrived to find nine of the wealthiest citizens of Perm already collected. Looking out of the windows they saw a full company of Siberian Rifles surround the building with fixed bayonets. The general entered the room and sat at his table, they remained standing. Looking at, and _through_, each one separately, he delivered this cryptic speech: ”Gentlemen, I have brought you here to tell you that out on the railway between you and your enemies lie the remains of our brave army! They have little clothes, but plenty of wood, so their fires may prevent their bodies from being frozen, but ten days from now there will be no food, and unless food can be secured, nothing can prevent their dispersal or starvation. I have determined that they shall neither disperse nor starve. The Omsk Ministers have forgotten us, the Supreme Governor has given his orders, but these paltry people who ought to a.s.sist him do nothing. We must do their work ourselves.”
Reading down a list of the necessities of his army he said: ”You gentlemen will produce these things within ten days. If on February 21 these supplies are not to hand, that will be the end of everything so far as you ten gentlemen are concerned.”
”He allowed no discussion,” said M. Pastrokoff, ”and if he had we should have been discussing it now, and the Terrorists would have re-occupied Perm. I returned home and felt cold in the feet. I had a guard of fifteen men placed on my person, the others the same. I knew that some of my companions in distress were muddlers, but sent for my friend ---- and drew our plans for carrying out the general's orders. We were greatly helped in this determination by witnessing the execution of a company and platoon commander of one of our regiments under General Hepoff's orders for having allowed thirty men of their company to desert to the enemy during an affair of outposts. We saw we had to deal with a man who never went back on his word.”